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Photos from Cob Oven Building Workshop
Photos from the cob oven building workshop at the Ashby Garden on 11/14/2004. The workshop was part of the DIY Festival that the Barrington Collective organized.
This top photo shows the oven structure around 1pm. It is actually about a foot taller, but the photo I took had buckets in the way.
I had a hard time finding info about cob building on the web- maybe I should have looked for natural building sites instead of cob sites. Here is a general description of cob building: http://www.alternatives.com/cob-building/what.html This one, too: http://www.geocities.com/mosesrocket/... and http://www.earthgarden.com.au/strawbale/cob_oven2.pdf
Basically put, cob building uses natural ingredients that can be home-grown or found locally - rocks, water, sand, straw (can be grown from cover crops, clay, and you and your friends' labor. It is long-lasting and all-natural, and it uses cheaper fuel than your gas or electric oven. People in the US who are interested in peak oil are learning to use our old technologies that had been forgotten during the timber and oil booms.
A woman and her child came into the garden early in the afternoon. I told her about the oven-building workshop, and she said everyone used this kind of oven in her native Mexico.
For future cob building workshops in the Bay Area, keep in touch with the website of the Ecology Center in Berkeley at http://www.ecologycenter.org, the Barrington Collective - http://www.barringtoncollective.org, and of course, Indybay's calendar at http://www.indybay.org/calendar
I had a hard time finding info about cob building on the web- maybe I should have looked for natural building sites instead of cob sites. Here is a general description of cob building: http://www.alternatives.com/cob-building/what.html This one, too: http://www.geocities.com/mosesrocket/... and http://www.earthgarden.com.au/strawbale/cob_oven2.pdf
Basically put, cob building uses natural ingredients that can be home-grown or found locally - rocks, water, sand, straw (can be grown from cover crops, clay, and you and your friends' labor. It is long-lasting and all-natural, and it uses cheaper fuel than your gas or electric oven. People in the US who are interested in peak oil are learning to use our old technologies that had been forgotten during the timber and oil booms.
A woman and her child came into the garden early in the afternoon. I told her about the oven-building workshop, and she said everyone used this kind of oven in her native Mexico.
For future cob building workshops in the Bay Area, keep in touch with the website of the Ecology Center in Berkeley at http://www.ecologycenter.org, the Barrington Collective - http://www.barringtoncollective.org, and of course, Indybay's calendar at http://www.indybay.org/calendar
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the purple things that you see on the side of the finished oven structure are scarlet runner beans (this kind of bean grows really well in the Bay Area, including at the Asby Garden, and the green round thing is undoubtedly a tomato from the garden ;)
The Ashby Garden is on Ashby between Mabel and Acton (between San Pablo and Sacramento). Workdays are generally on Sundays between 11 and 3, and often on Wednesdays, as well.
The Ashby Garden is on Ashby between Mabel and Acton (between San Pablo and Sacramento). Workdays are generally on Sundays between 11 and 3, and often on Wednesdays, as well.
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